


Hold Me Tight; Don't Let Me Breathe

by folie_aplusieurs



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Angst, Halloween, Haunted Houses, M/M, Mania Era, One-Shot, actually haunted houses, break ups, i don't know how to write band au sue me, make ups, skeleton shirts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-13 23:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16481588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/folie_aplusieurs/pseuds/folie_aplusieurs
Summary: "There’s something terribly depressing about being alone on a holiday, Pete’s found. It leads to irrational loneliness and the desire for someone— anyone— to visit and cure the solitude for just one day, one night. It’s a feeling Pete’s had too many times before, tripping over himself to find a stranger willing to ease the ache whenever it appears. It’s nothing new."~In which Pete and Patrick get stuck in a haunted house together like the idiots they are.





	Hold Me Tight; Don't Let Me Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> For Trick or Pete
> 
> A work outside of BIV? WTF? 
> 
> Lol, Happy Halloween-- assuming it's still Halloween wherever you are. I hope this fic makes your day or night a little more spooky and bit more fun. And check out the other trick or pete works! It's an awesome collection and I'm honored to be involved.
> 
> I'm actually uploading this from a somewhat crappy Halloween party so I couldn't quite edit. Sorry. Hopefully it isn't too shit.
> 
> Hope you enjoy! Here we go:

There’s something terribly depressing about being alone on a holiday, Pete’s found. It leads to irrational loneliness and the desire for someone— anyone— to visit and cure the solitude for just one day, one night. It’s a feeling Pete’s had too many times before, tripping over himself to find a stranger willing to ease the ache whenever it appears. It’s nothing new.

What is new, though, is the way he’s aching. It’s the sort of silence he’s stuck in, the image of cool blue eyes and warm cinnamon hair rocking through his mind each time he shuts his eyes and thinks of a stranger to find. His memory sticks on the way those eyes look when they’re on the same level as his own, deep enough to drown him and lovely enough to make him take the plunge. He recalls how each strand of hair feels beneath his palm, between his fingers, against his chest when they fall asleep— laying against each other on the couch like this.

Except, Pete thinks, his thoughts skidding to a halt, it can’t be like this. Because Pete’s splayed out on the couch, yes, but Patrick isn’t here— something that’s taking too much time to get used to. 

Twenty-one days and counting, to be a bit more exact.

It’s no one’s fault— or, at least, that’s what Patrick had said. Not that fault matters when Pete’s throat was still sore from their last fight, shouting and screaming about something stupid because fighting, it seems, is the easiest way to get over the stress of being on tour for so long.

So maybe he said something he shouldn’t have, implied something cruel about Patrick’s love for him, but Patrick did the same back. For every denial Pete screamed about Patrick caring for him, Patrick responded with an insult twice as sharp.

And his last rebuttal? That was the most cutting one yet.

“I’m done!” He’d shouted, hands in the air and face red as he backed away, livid and wide-eyed. His hair was a mess, thin and missing any of the hats he’d packed this time. “Goddamnit, Pete, I’m done. This is… We’ve, we’ve, we’ve…. We’ve been fucking fighting almost every day since we started this tour! And that’s going to land us right back where Folie did so… I’m done.”

He was done and he was unyielding about it, taking Pete’s silence as permission to list off every reason a “break from each other”— a fucking break-up, Pete knew better than most— was a good idea.

“We’ll just give it a bit of time,” Patrick had said, calming himself down with the worst decision Pete’s ever heard. “Tour’s done with so we don’t have to see each other much anyway so. We’ll see what happens.”

Pete doesn’t remember what happened after that, if he slammed his fist into the side of the bus before or after Patrick left or if his own insults met his tongue the way he wished they would. But he does remember the loneliness; he does remember the regret.

He remembers Patrick walking off and he remembers every color in his life dulling down until he found himself at home, drinking and crying and breaking his phone before he can do something stupid like call Patrick and beg for forgiveness he doesn’t need or deserve, depending on the day.

It took a few weeks but, after getting over the certainty that Patrick’s moved on, Pete’s finally able to admit that he doesn’t need him back.

But this doesn’t change the fact that he misses having him; he misses holding him and kissing him and making stupid jokes when it’s late and neither want to sleep.

At this point, it’s easiest to shut his eyes and imagine a stranger in all those places. It’s easiest to tell himself it’s not that he misses Patrick— how could he, with that temper and snobbery and attention span and…

Pete opens his eyes and peels himself up off the couch, running fingers through his hair. It’s gotten longer than he’d originally planned on growing it when he settled on the idea, uneven in some places, and he groans. 

Patrick would have reminded him to get it trimmed, at least. But, as Pete is very aware of, Patrick is not here.

Halloween is, though, and that’s the part Pete hates the most. He’d woken up this morning to an email confirmation for his tickets to a nearby Halloween Fest. The tickets were purchased a few months back, Pete bouncing on the balls of his feet as he read about the zombified escape room challenges, scary mazes, and horror movie screenings. And that’s not even including the costume contests, free candy, or promises of a terror-filled night. The site had also boasted of the first ever tours of the city’s most haunted house— The Firefly Home. Pete didn’t know much about the house’s backstory but it had sounded exciting enough and he’d tossed a few passes to that into his cart.

Two passes. One for him; one for Patrick. 

Which leads to Pete tossing the most pathetic pity party for himself in his living room. For the first time, Patrick had seemed interested in attending one of Pete’s stupid horror-themed ideas. It hardly seems fair that they broke up right before they were supposed to go; Pete’s half-convinced the chicken did it on purpose.

It’s a joke— Patrick would have just said no if he didn’t want to go— but the thought is enough to instill a new sense of betrayal within Pete’s blood. He stands, arms crossed over his chest, and glares at the afternoon sun outside. 

Screw Patrick, he decides. He’s Pete fucking Wentz and he’s not going to waste his Halloween lamenting this ghost of a relationship.

No matter how persistently it’s haunting him.

~

Pete wanders through the crowds of the festival, trying not to feel as dead as the glow-in-the-dark skeletal torso tossed across his chest. He’s sure there’s some metaphor he’d been reaching for when he chose this shirt, his hand wrapping around the hollow ribcage like a mask, the cracked edges of bone taunting him with their ability to only light up in the dark— where no one’s around, where nobody cares.

Staring at the jagged patterns meant to be a body— and he could be describing himself or the shirt here— felt like pleading before a jury.

_ See, I’m alright _ , he urged his reflection.  _ See, I don’t need him.  _

Perhaps, due in part to this pleading, Pete ignores the fact that this shirt wasn’t even his idea. It was Patrick’s, back when they were together, planning out a couple’s costumes as all couples do.

Patrick, of course, has the other skeleton and that’s another metaphor Pete could do without examining.

Stupid as always, Pete shakes his head and drops back into wherever it is he happens to be on the planet right now. After a quick look at one of the signs put up with a map printed across it, Pete’s able to say he’s somewhere in the middle— between the corn maze and fun house, both of which he’s already done. With a frown, he folds his arms and tries to find where to head to next.

It’s not that the festival isn’t fun; on the contrary, it’s a lot of fun. Pete had been handed a bag already full of candy at the gate and encountered every version of candy apples possible. The escape room was exactly the kind of frustrating he loves and the movie room is screening all the old horror movies. People love his skeleton shirt even if he hates it and he’d even run into a couple dressed as Jack and Sally— the three of them had posed for a picture where Pete held out his tattoo and pretended it wasn’t unfinished.

But something like that brings him right back to the original problem, doesn’t it? Couples and people having fun in groups. Parents keeping kids by the pumpkin patch and kiddie games, high school couples splitting Halloween themed snacks and clinging to each other each time one of the zombies scattered around the park pops out at them. 

Pete doesn’t have someone to go pick pumpkins with him. He doesn’t have someone who’ll eat the rest of his Halloween cookies— decorated as eyes and brains. 

And when  _ two  _ zombies jumped out at him after he left the bathroom, he certainly had no one to point and laugh and help him back off the floor.

Pete’s frown deepens. He pretends it doesn’t.

A girl shoves up next to him, arm wrapped around her boyfriend as they point at the map and try to decide where to go next. She wants to get more food, he wants to watch a movie.

Pete sighs and turns away. If the map’s showing all the attractions then there’s only one thing left to do. One thing left to lift his spirits, to distract him for a handful of easily forgotten moments, one thing left to try.

The Haunted House.

The Firefly House has been the only other thing left on Pete’s mind, it’s shadowed figure looming in the back of the festival, gated off until tours start. It’s large and a bit of a cliche, Victorian-styled and twice the size of any house they’d build now. At first, Pete had thought it was painted a strange orange shade but now, walking closer to it with his hands in his pockets, he sees that it’s merely a dozen or so windows capturing the lights of the fair. Fairy lights strung across every available surface flicker like eyelids between orange and white, drunken groups shrieking and laughing at the sudden changes. 

“Here for the tour?” A blonde woman dressed in all red with flashing devil horns asks, pursing her bright red lips around each word. If it weren’t for the nametag— Cassie— and the way she’s leaning across the ticket booth, Pete wouldn’t have guessed she works here. He nods without pointing this out, passing over the ticket he purchased months ago with… “Ya got here just in time, y’know. It’s the last tour they’re runnin’.”

“Really?” Pete asks, looking around. Sure, it’s dark and all the younger visitors have gone home but, for Halloween, the night’s still young. “It’s barely eleven-thirty.”

“Yeah, well.” Cassie shrugs, quirking an eyebrow up. “They don’t like to be in there after midnight. Don’t trust the ghosts ‘nd all.”

“Oh,” Pete says, taking back the ticket once she’s stamped it with something in the shape of a pumpkin. “So it’s really haunted?”

Cassie shrugs, her smile matching the costume she wears. “It’s boasted as the most haunted house in America, honey. You think they don’t got something real in there?”

Pete’s mouth dries and he glances over at the house. It seems larger than before, windows twinkling with lights and the door gaping open like a mouth.

Pete doesn’t normally put too much faith in ghosts but tonight he just might.

“Now, hurry along, then,” Cassie says, looking past Pete as more people file into line. “You’ll be part of group B, okay? There should be about six of ya so stick with Michael— that’s the guide— and you’ll be safe, okay?”

“Okay.” 

Pete’s stomach flips as he makes his way into the front lawn where a beaming dark-haired man with a sign reading GROUP B stands. Three others are already gathered around him, asking questions about the house and the ghost, and Pete joins with a hesitant little smile.

“Oh, hey, there!” Michael says, tucking the sign under his arm and reaching over to shake Pete’s hand. “What’s your name? You looking forward to the tour?”

“Pete,” Pete says, trying hard not to look at the house. “And, yeah, but it’s not, like… It’s not dangerous, is it?”

Michael’s smile is a bit demeaning but Pete takes comfort in the obvious tone of his voice. “We wouldn’t be holding tours if it was.”

The three others— a group of girls with matching tattoos— step forward and begin their interrogation again.

“But will we see a ghost? Will we hear them talk to us? Oh my god, what if someone gets possessed?”

“I can’t say we’ve ever had a possession incident but there have been eerie incidents where—”

“Hi, hey, I’m sorry but, like, um, this… is this… this is group B, right?”

Pete’s bones chill enough he’s sure his lungs are nothing but fog and the gust of fear across his skin has nothing to do with ghost stories.

“Yeah,” Michael says, reaching past Pete to the newcomer, to— “And your name is?”

“Patrick.” 

Pete’s so cold his bones could shatter just from the way someone— someone,  _ he _ — bumps into Pete’s shoulder on the way to shake Michael’s hand. Pete’s so frozen, so still, he’s certain not even the spinning of the earth could move him, his soul attached to something that doesn’t exist outside of the way he feels.

“And I’m Kate. You haven’t started yet, have you? We’d be here earlier but Patrick got lost in the corn maze.”

The world loves to prove Pete wrong and it does so in the cruelest way. Because something, it seems, can move him. Something can bring a sudden rushing heat into his blood, a hot breath of confusion across his tongue.

Without thinking any better of it, Pete turns and stares at Patrick and the girl beside him.

They aren’t matching the way Pete had feared they might but, somehow, the light-up bones stitched across Patrick’s shirt are worse.

Kate continues to speak with Michael, her long red hair flipping back and forth across her bare shoulders— she seems to be some kind of mermaid. Pete hates her costume a little but at least Patrick isn’t dressed as Prince Eric; the whole merman and human thing had been one of the ideas Patrick had shot down back when they were joking about dressing up together. Patrick had claimed he’d make an awful merman and it became a joke between the two of them for weeks.

Now, though, neither can seem to speak. 

Patrick’s eyes widen when they find Pete’s and Pete can see the exact moment Patrick’s breath catches in his throat, the exact second he steps back and tries to figure out if he can slink away from this situation without anyone realizing.

Pete knows Patrick, though, and he knows Patrick’s going to stay.

“Hey,” Pete says. Patrick jumps and Pete doesn’t imagine him cringing away from zombies, doesn’t think of how cute that would be. 

“H-hey,” Patrick says with a weak smile. “Didn’t think I’d see you here.”

_ Of course not _ . “I had a ticket, so…”

Pete holds his ticket up. Patrick does the same. 

“So did I. I guess I forgot that we—”

“I didn’t forget.”

Patrick blinks again and drops his hand, shoving the ticket in his back pocket. Pete watches an entire monologue form and dissipate on Patrick’s lips, brushed away by the swipe of his tongue across his bottom lip.

Pete knows Patrick but not as well as he’d like because, right now, he has no idea what Patrick’s thinking.

“Alright!” Michael says, stepping between them. “Let’s get on with this tour!”

Pete turns away from Patrick and Kate and faces the house.

The latter is far less terrifying than the rest.

~

Between Michael’s babbling about moving objects and the hushed laughter from the two behind him, Pete begins to do the impossible.

He begins to actively hate Halloween.

But, then, he’s celebrating Halloween with his ex. And the worst part is that his ex is Patrick and Patrick’s hanging around this girl Pete’s never seen before and he shouldn’t care but he does and it sucks. And he can’t even really hate Kate about it. She’s friendly and, though she’s wearing Patrick’s cardigan now, there’s no reason to despise her.

Patrick, though, is free of such traits. Using the ticket he and Pete bought to impress a new date is low and Pete falls deeper into a dark, ugly anger the more he thinks about it.

“Alright, so, if you look down that hall you’ll see a door that’s closed. That’s the way to the basement,” Michael says, whispering the ghost’s name. “We’ve locked it because it’s the most active area in the house and more than half of our workers and volunteers have reported strange things happening to them.”

“Stranger than pictures and mirrors falling off the walls?” Pete asks, turning to look at one such picture. It’s a black and white photograph of a young woman— Leah Sun, presumably— gazing forlornly at the camera. It’s grainy and cracked and the angle’s all wrong— not to mention the exposure and resolution— but Pete does feel bad. 

According to Michael’s story, Leah Sun spent her life pining after a lover who left shortly after their wedding. Everyone assumed he’d had an affair or some other scandal but Leah was convinced he was kidnapped by a jealous girl in the town. Of course, no one believed her and Leah lost her mind, screaming about her lover being locked and tortured in the basement. Ultimately, those cries changed into her claim that he’d been killed. No one knows how Leah died, just that they found her body in the basement one day.

“Yes, definitely,” Michael says seriously, reminding Pete he’d asked a question. “We’ve had reports of doors locking on their own and of time passing strangely in the basement. Not to mention the fact that everyone who goes down there says they’ve seen her.”

“Really?” Kate asks, pushing ahead to stand with the other girls. Patrick stays behind, stays out of sight, and Pete’s thankful for it. “Have you seen her?”

Michael’s lips press into a thin line and he waits for a beat before nodding. 

The girls screech. 

“Oh my god, okay,” one of them says. “What was she like? Like, was she floating or could you see through her? Did she look like her picture or did she have any wounds from her death?”

“Okay, um, she’s…” Michael waves his hands frantically in an attempt to get everyone to calm down. “It was just for a moment but, yes, she looks just like her pictures except…”

“Except?” Pete prompts after Michael trails off. Michael looks up, a fitting and haunted look in his eyes. 

“She was burnt all over but it wasn’t… It wasn’t natural,” Michael tries to explain. “It was like there was a fire still  _ inside  _ her, burning her from the inside out. She tried to talk but all that came out was sparks. That’s why they call it Firefly, you know. Because the sparks look like fireflies and when you see them you know Leah’s near.”

It doesn’t make much sense but Pete shivers all the same. 

“What was she trying to say?” Kate asks. “Are there any theories on that?”

It’s horrible because Kate sounds just like Patrick with her inquisitive pressing for more knowledge and answers. She smiles with round cheeks and she even looks like him, the perfect Hollywood couple.

“People think she’s crying out for her lover,” Michael says. “After all these years, she’s still waiting for him.”

Michael says it sadly but Kate's pout is more judgemental, arms crossing over her chest as she scoffs.

“She’s  _ still  _ hung up on him? Can’t she find him in the afterlife? Or, better yet, can’t she just move on? God, there’s nothing I hate more than people who just can’t move on. It’s a sign you’re still in love and—”

“Kate!” Patrick’s voice is a greater spark than Leah’s could ever, turning Pete toward him with all the demanding presence of a flame. Patrick looks to Pete and then back to Kate. “I asked you not to—”

And Patrick’s the one who trails off now, the one red-faced as everyone stares to see what he’ll say. 

But Pete already knows.

“Oh, so was that about me?” He asks, unable to keep the vile inside any longer. It spills out like a curse of his own, his spiritual presence nothing but hateful words and spiteful tones. “You two have been talking about me?”

“What? No.” Patrick’s a horrible liar and Pete knows all his tells anyway. “She just meant—”

“But what did  _ you  _ mean?” 

Patrick doesn’t answer that one and Pete doesn’t stick around to give him the chance to make up an excuse.

“You guys go on,” Pete snaps, storming past Patrick but not touching him— afraid of touching him, hating the way that constant sting of rejection follows him around. “I just need some time to… to cool down. To take a breath.”

Michael doesn’t try too hard to stop him, warning him to keep to the hallways they covered and nothing more. As if Pete’s scared of wailing spirits or haunted rooms when his imagination is so much worse.  He finds himself further down the hall and he can’t remember if they’d gone this way or not. It’s dark and cool but, then, most of the house is the same.

If he sits there and bashes Patrick in his head for ignoring him— blatantly and cruelly— the less hypocritical part of his mind reminds him how he’d done the same. He should have just kept his mouth shut, should have stayed quiet the way he’d been. None of these are new thoughts but they do sound different when they echo on the emptiness around him.

Pete’s feelings and words are an esoteric kind of knowledge and Patrick was the only group that seemed to understand that. Pete wonders if that’s why he’s been so confused as of late, if it’s the sudden loss of his interpreter that’s left him struggling to speak or breathe.

Or maybe this is just a simple heartbreak and what they had was never so special. 

“Pete… Hey, Pete, are you alright?” Called by Pete’s thoughts alone— or so Pete tells himself— Patrick ducks into the darkened hallway with him, his eyes wide with worry.

Pete hates how it still causes twinges in his chest.

“Fine,” Pete says, pushing himself away from the wall. “Do they want me to head back?”

“What? Oh, no. It’s just about over, anyway. Another gruesome story then we’re out.” Patrick laughs a little, rubbing the back of his neck shyly. It’s so fucking endearing that Pete feels sick.

“Then why’d you even come?” Pete asks and he knows it’s stupid but he wonders it anyway. “You know you hate horror. You didn’t have to come.”

Patrick blinks and Pete almost misses the faint blush across his cheeks, hidden by the lengthened shadows of his eyelashes. “Well, you know, we bought the tickets and everything and I didn’t want it to go to waste. And we bought it  _ together  _ and I’m guessing that’s the reason you’re here.”

It’s never just a guess with Patrick, never a lucky glimpse into Pete’s mind. It’s a fact and it’s a statement and it’s never been fair that Patrick knows him so well.

Pete denies it anyway. “I’m actually trying to forget you but good try.”

“Right.” Because it’s not a guess or lucky shot, Patrick’s not as wounded as Pete would hope he would be. But he does let loose a strand of anger and Pete grabs onto it as if it were a chance to win him back.

“So you can run back to the rest of the group now,” Pete said. He stares at the floorboards, the dust, the ants crawling through the cracks. “Or are you too scared to do that? I can walk you back but I won’t hold your hand—”

“What the fuck is your problem?” Patrick asks, the familiar pitch of his temper landing across Pete’s skin like a casual caress. “Can we just have a nice night? It’s Halloween and I’d rather not waste it fighting with you.”

“Well, I’d rather not waste it with you at all so it looks like we’ve both lost,” Pete snaps. Patrick shakes his head, an incredulous laugh tarnishing those lips of his.

“You always think things are some competition,” he says, more to himself than to Pete. Then, “Come on. Let’s go. The quicker we find the rest, the quicker we part ways.”

It shouldn’t burn as much as it does but Pete keeps his mouth shut and follows Patrick anyway. Patrick leads them down the hallway and past rooms supposedly housing spirits and trapped souls, wounded hearts left to linger at the foot of their lover’s bed. 

As Pete watches Patrick’s back, he relates with a bitter smile.

It’s a few moments later when Patrick pauses, his head tipped to the side. “I could have sworn they were here.”

“Are we lost?” Pete asks, ever the bratty child. Patrick tosses a dirty look over his shoulder but he can’t mask the anxious twitch of his lips.

“ _ No _ ,” he says. “They probably just already left. Look, the front door’s that way, right? Let’s go check the lawn.”

It’s the darkness that whispers to Pete and chills his skin when he watches Patrick head for the door. It’s the night, the time, the twinkling orange and white outside that tells him what Patrick finds out by trying to twist the knob.

“It’s locked.” They say it at the same time, the same breath. 

Patrick narrows his eyes at Pete but, like before and like always, his fear outweighs whatever frustration he feels.

“Pete,” he says, the slightest tremor in his voice. “Pete, we’ve been locked in.” 

~

It’s easiest to believe in ghosts when you’re alone and afraid, trapped in the dark with the one person who best knows how to hurt you.

Patrick sits across from him at the dusty kitchen table, arms folded with his head hidden in them as he hums the part of  _ Immortals  _ he always seems to forget. If it weren’t for the melody haunting the air and the jittery bounce of his legs, Pete would think he’s sleeping. 

Of course, Patrick picks this moment to look up with a glare. “This is your fault.”

It’s such a shift from the humming, harsh and abrupt that Pete pulls back, a hurricane of emotion pressing against his ribs. 

“ _ My  _ fault?” He could be harsher, spit the words back with an accusation close behind but that’s something he’d do if they were together, back when he thought that no fight or blow could tear them apart. It’s a memory he doesn’t want. “Do you even have a reason for that or are you just lashing out?”

Patrick’s eyes narrow, hints of blue spirits in the dark. “You threw a fit and ran off from the group which isn’t surprising but is still incredibly stupid. And when I came to bring you back you didn’t want to talk, you just wanted to fight. Like always. We could have left with everyone else but you just had to go hide out and be dramatic and, and, god, whatever.  _ That’s  _ my reason. Your turn.”

“Pass,” Pete says, rubbing between his eyes because anything’s better than looking at Patrick and his stupid glowing shirt right now. “Skip me. I don’t care. Can we go onto a conversation topic that actually matters?”

Patrick scoffs and it sounds like he’s choking. 

“It’s cold,” he says after some consideration, somehow making the simple observation sound like yet another accusation. “And my phone’s dead. Do you know how much of a cliche that is?” Patrick pauses and Pete looks over long enough to watch him twist his head around, glaring into every corner of the room. “If this is a prank, it’s not funny.”

“I hope they taped the part where you punched the door,” Pete says, looking down at Patrick’s reddened knuckles. “ _ That _ was funny.”

Pete used to joke about Patrick’s eyes having that yellow ring in the middle just to make his glares seem that much more evil. The glare he receives now doesn’t disprove the theory.

“Look,” Pete continues, laying his hands flat on the table as a sign of peace; Patrick rolls his eyes. “I can’t break the door down, Patrick, and I don’t get any fucking service in this building so it’s not like I can call for help, either. But I can try to make the best of it so, like, do you want my jacket? Want to go try and find a heater? Because, seriously, anything is better than listening to you complain about things I can’t change.”

Patrick rubs his lips together before pinching the bottom one, a habit that’s as distracting as ever. Pete doesn’t have long to appreciate it, though, before Patrick’s shaking his head and fixing his hair beneath the stupid cap he’s pressed on top of it.

“There was a bedroom we checked out a bit ago,” he says, shoving his chair back and standing. “We can hang out in there and, I guess, try not to freeze to death.”

Pete can’t help but grin, sharp and twisted but still there. “Are you talking about the one with all the satanic pentagrams graffitied in there? The one Michael thinks opens a portal to hell?”

“Yeah,” Patrick says as he stands, not missing a beat. “I’m planning on shoving you back in.”

Patrick turns his back and walks away with muttered curses under his breath. It’d be easy to joke about his attitude but Pete bites back the words, greedily keeping them just beneath his tongue— protecting them from someone who’ll only see an insult in his voice. Their silence broken only by creaking floors and brushes of wind against the walls, Pete follows Patrick through the haunted house.

~

Minutes. Hours. Days. The room is hot and severely lacking the promised ghost activity and Pete swears he and Patrick have been sitting with their backs to the walls across from each other for at least a century.

Patrick keeps fiddling with his phone, unpacking the battery and pressing it back in as if it’ll magically recharge from the restless act. Pete stretches his legs out in front of him and then pulls them back in, tugs them to his chest and then crosses them like a kid in preschool. His own form of fidgeting, one Patrick keeps twitching at each time he visibly prepares to scold Pete for his antics.

But Patrick doesn’t say a word— he doesn’t even sigh— and this is almost worst than fighting. Pete would rather sling dirty phrases around if it meant Patrick would look at him, think of him. He’d toss punches and blows and strikes if it meant Patrick would touch him, however briefly.

He’d apologize for disbelieving Patrick’s love for him if he thought he could say it convincingly.

Pete stretches his legs out once more, crossing them at the ankles and pressing down so the wooden floor creaks. Patrick flinches, jaw tense, but he doesn’t look up. It’s as if Pete’s the ghost, the one haunting them now, and it’s not fair if Patrick’s not playing the part of the victim correctly.

“Hey,” Pete says, his voice echoing through the quiet they’d accepted. He digs through his pockets for a Snickers bar and chucks it Patrick’s way, wincing when it bounces off his gut. 

Patrick looks down at it, his already non-existent amusement sinking impossibly lower. “Is this your way of calling me grumpy?”

Fuck, Pete doesn’t even speak and Patrick still hears an insult.

“No,” he says, dragging out the word as he rolls his eyes— the latter merely an excuse to look away. “It’s my… fuck, okay, it’s my way of saying that I’m sorry you’re having a shitty Halloween because of me.”

Patrick’s silent for long enough that Pete’s afraid to look over, certain he’ll be greeted with the familiar signs of a bull prepared to charge or, worse, something sad and reluctant. Dreary depression had clung to Patrick’s eyelids in the form of damp tears the few days after they’d broken up, his cheeks red each time Pete passed him by. But that soon hardened into cool gazes and somewhat friendly smiles, their history rewritten or erased depending on whichever look Patrick decided to give him.

And, today, Patrick’s absolutely flummoxed, face comically crinkled as he attempts to comprehend what Pete had said. It’s not a new look— in fact, it’s probably the first Pete was ever introduced to— but it’s gone so quick that Pete’s certain it was a trick of the light.

Patrick turns his head when his eyes meet Pete, the familiar rosy pink shades of embarrassment planting their roots in his neck and spreading up to his cheeks.

“It’s fine,” he says. “I mean, Halloween was always more of your thing, anyway.”

“Then why did you come?” Pete doesn’t think of the girl at Patrick’s side or the way Patrick had ignored him for most of the night. He doesn’t think of stupid matching costumes or tickets bought together and he doesn’t think of what he wants the answer to be.

The pink becomes red, puddles of blood beneath layers of pale skin, and Patrick’s cool facade slips when the question makes the trek across the room and into his chest.

“I, oh, well—” That familiar stutter, that familiar way of blinking— right eye just a half-second quicker than the left. That familiar high-pitched tone that cries that it’s been caught.

A cry cut off by another one, a further one, a disparate collection of sobs leaking in from the hallway. They sound like nothing but mewls at first but there’s a voice behind them, there’s a human making that noise.

Fear and shame gone, past traded for the horrors of the present, Pete and Patrick lock eyes. For the entire time they stare— five seconds of barely breathing, five seconds of begging the other to do something— the cries only increase. Not as if they’re growing louder but as if they’re growing closer. 

“We should check it out,” Patrick whispers, though there’s no way any human could hear him over the horrific sounds they’re making. Pete only knows what he says because Patrick shoves himself up and begins to walk to the door.

It’s when Patrick’s by him that Pete’s survival instincts— instincts built up from years spent scouting sketchy venues and even more years spent watching whatever horror film he could find— kick in with the vengeance of a horse’s hind legs making contact with his chest.

“Don’t!” The word explodes from his chest as he reaches for Patrick, stilling him with the sudden grip of his hand around his wrist. “It’s… It’s not safe. You can’t go.” He sounds insane but what else is new? His guts pile on top of each other, slithering to his throat with pleas for Patrick to stay safe, to stay in place.

Patrick looks down at their hands for but a moment before he pulls away with a jerky shake of his head. The facade is back in place. “Christ, Pete, there could be a kid out there.”

No child would be making such lonely wails, Pete thinks, but he knows there’s no changing Patrick’s mind. If it comes down to sending Patrick alone and following him, well… Broken-up or not, his heart always follows Patrick; the only difference being that the shattered shards in his chest are forming the arrow rather than the simple tug of a wholly constructed organ.

The crying grows louder in the hallway and the two wander around, breaths caught halfway between their lungs and mouths as they seek out the source. Patrick takes greater charge in the quest, peering into each room and asking— his voice as low as when he’s saving it for a concert— if anyone needs help.

He’s a better man than Pete and, though Pete knows it makes him silly and stupid and superstitious, he tugs on Patrick’s sleeve after each room and tells him not to bother anymore.

“Oh, for god’s sake, Pete,” Patrick says after one such plea, turning around from the room he’d been peering into. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

Ghosts and ghouls pester Pete’s mind, far more literal than the demons he’s used to brushing away. These howl through his mind with visions of sharp teeth, tearing skin and bruises beneath bright blue eyes. 

“Someone can get hurt,” he says. It’s low and Patrick doesn’t hear it. 

“What?” Patrick asks, stepping closer. He’s in Pete’s circle now, his aura overlapping with the mess of Pete’s emotions. “What are you—”

The crying stops and Pete looks up from his shoes, up at Patrick— 

Up to the sight of the back-lit man before him, something like sparks or fireflies reflecting in his glasses.

Pete’s mouth goes dry and his throat twists itself into a knot when he tries to gasp, choking and stumbling backward from the sight. Something bright and brilliant as a setting sun fills the hallway. Only for a moment; only for a heartbeat.

“Patrick,” Pete gags, hands fumbling in front of him because there’s nothing to point at, nothing to pin the phenomenon on.

Patrick, though, is still and Pete wonders if this is merely a hallucination. Maybe he never left his couch today and maybe he fell asleep. Maybe this is the part where he wakes up screaming Patrick’s name and spends the rest of his life hating that Patrick isn’t his to protect. Eventually, though, he sees Patrick’s subtle shakes, the way sweat is sticking his hair to the nape of his neck, and he sees how Patrick’s biting his lip, eyes shut and breaths fighting to remain even.

“It’s warm,” he says when Pete’s settled his hands back at his side, when the sight of the fire has faded away. “Not… Not anymore but, for a moment, Pete, it was so warm.”

He doesn’t expand on the thought, doesn’t ramble the way Pete’s come to expect. His words are mere breaths of thoughts, his eyes opening to show a thousand more fears trapped within.

Pete’s heart plops uneasily in his chest when he takes in Patrick’s terror, swallowing and reshaping words and promises and fears of his own. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Yeah.” Patrick nods, licking his lips and fixing his hat and shuffling in place as if fidgeting can shake away the horror clinging to his frame. “I’ll, um, I’ll check the back door again and you see if you can get any of the windows open, alright? We can meet at the—”

“No.” Pete doesn’t have to think before saying it, before taking Patrick’s hand and holding so tightly the other winces. For the first time, his tone truly betrays his fear. “You know what happens to couples- to  _ people  _ who split up in horror movies. Call me stupid or immature but I’m not taking that risk.”

Patrick looks down at their hands, his still limp in Pete’s, and then looks into Pete’s eyes. Thousands of lights glimmer and burn in those blue depths, thousands of questions glisten like those deadly sparks, and thousands of past promises burn between them. 

Slowly, Patrick toughens his grip on Pete’s hand, as well. Slowly, Patrick nods.

“Okay,” he says. “We’ll stick together.”

~

“I’m never going to a haunted house again,” Pete says as they check yet another terrifying room. The crying stopped a while ago but Patrick’s determined to find the original source, occasionally tilting his head to the side as if he can still hear the wails.

“Never going to a haunted house again?” Patrick asks from where he’s trying to shove open a stuck bathroom door. “Is that because you think you’re just not going to be able to leave this one?” 

Patrick says it like it’s a joke but Pete knows better than most about using humor to cope with terror. 

“Yeah,” he says, going along with it and stepping away from the curtains he’d been half-heartedly inspecting. They sway back and forth long after he’s crossed the room to Patrick’s side, a steady rhythm with the festival lights shining in from the perforated fabric. “That’s the plot twist. We’re actually ghosts trapped here and haunting our death site forever.”

“That’s… That’s not a joke,” Patrick says, leaning away from the door with a heavy sigh. Though he’d thrown his weight against it more than once, the thing hasn’t budged. “Stop looking for the worst possible scenario and help me find the kid who’d been crying or, like, at least a way out. And for god’s sake, stop pinching me!”

“What?” Pete’s head snaps up and he looks at Patrick with furrowed brows. “I’m not.”

“Oh, right,” Patrick scoffs, turning to face him. “I guess I’m just imagining— Oh. You’re not.” He grabs his wrist, suddenly trembling, and Pete’s stomach caves in with nausea at the sight of unexplained red welts lining Patrick’s ghostly pale skin. 

“Was that from the—” The door? A brush in with the wall? A rash from his shirt or a bite from some bug? Pete answers all the questions before they’re even asked— they’re not from anything he’s seen tonight.

“Sorry,” Patrick says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I thought you were… I must have been imagining things.”

Imagining things is more than a possibility with Patrick— the way he constantly jumps and flinches as if something’s breathing down his neck or screaming in the distance isn’t anything new to his constantly distracted brain— but Pete saw those marks, too. He saw the red skin, spots of blood where something broke the flesh and tempted the veins beneath. He saw the absolute horror in Patrick’s eyes and heard the catch in his breath.

He saw and felt the fear, a kind so terrible it’s better left unimagined.

“Hey,” he says, taking hurried steps to Patrick’s side. Patrick, who’s muttering to himself as he digs through a wardrobe, shaking so violently it seems he may cave in at any moment, a leaf beneath a monster’s boot. Patrick, who left Pete months ago and isn’t hurt by it; Patrick, who needs more than a scorned ex-lover right now. “Hey, we’re going to be fine.”

Despite all he knows, Pete can’t help but to place his hands on Patrick’s shoulders, to turn him around and look deep into those eyes he once knew so well— eyes that glimmer with something familiar and yet unknown. The latter could be tears or overwhelmed emotion and Pete doesn’t know what he’d do with the answer of which.

“We’re  _ not _ ,” Patrick says, his voice a whisper as if he’s afraid of someone overhearing him admit to his fear. “We’re not because something keeps messing with me and I don’t know what it is. I keep thinking I see it but then it’s gone and then I think I’m losing my fucking mind but then you see it, too, and—”

“Folie A Deux,” Pete says, falling onto the familiar reflex of inappropriate references. Sure enough, Patrick’s entire face— doughy and soft and entirely how Pete remembers— scrunches up in response. “The madness of two, right? That’s… That’s still us. So trust me when I say we’re gonna be fine.”

By all accounts, it makes no sense. It’s a weak attempt at comfort and Pete’s stumbling voice does nothing to help the effect. He winces before he’s done, choking down the rest of his speech before he embarrasses himself further.

But Patrick doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t mock and he doesn’t tease.

He smiles. He smiles and it’s warm. It’s soft, barely touching his lips, and it comes to life in his eyes. The glisten of someone understanding an inside joke, happy to be part of the humor at all. Blues and golds swirl like ghosts in those eyes, reaching out to tug Pete closer— possessing him with visions of lips on lips and the cinnamon-sharp scent of Patrick’s breath and hair.

It’d be easy to lean in now, Patrick’s arms soft and loose beneath Pete’s touch, and it’s even easier to fancy that Patrick wouldn’t turn away. Maybe he’d lean in, too; maybe he’ll lean in first. Maybe they’ll kiss and make-up and every ghost that’s been following Pete since the split will find peace.

His eyelids grow heavy and his head dips forward. Patrick’s next inhale is sharper than the last but he doesn’t pull away. He keeps still, keeps quiet, but he doesn’t pull away…

Until glass shatters and they tear apart like wind ripping open an unlocked door.

“What was that?” Patrick breathes long after the sound’s echoes have died. “Pete, what the fuck was that?”

He’s shaking again but Pete can’t calm him when his own heart is still trying to distinguish up from down and left from right— Patrick from fear and fear from stupidity. It thuds in his chest, accusingly, and he swallows hard.

“I don’t know.” Pete’s not halfway content with his answer, hating each syllable as he releases it into the air, and it’s this dissatisfaction that forces him to continue. “I think it came from the next room— some guest bedroom, right? Do you want to check it out?”

Patrick looks like he’d rather do anything else, colorless and wide-eyed, but he nods all the same. 

“We were going to look in that room soon anyway. Before we got distracted by—” He cuts off, biting down on his lip and looking away.

Pete smiles. It does little to calm him. “By our imagination.”

“Right,” Patrick says, smiling back even though this grin doesn’t reach his eyes and even though he’s pulling away from Pete. “We should go.”

The hallway greets them with a cruel chill, coating over their skin like a layer of frost on a winter morning— uninvited and promising a storm to come. Pete folds his arms to keep from reaching for Patrick, uncertain of when he’d let go if he made the mistake of holding him again.

“The window’s broken,” Patrick says, stepping into the room before Pete does. Shock colors his tone like a virus, infecting Pete with the same uneasiness. “I guess it could have been the wind or something, right? Maybe some kids messing around?”

Pete doesn’t answer, his guts tugging him both to and from the broken glass, his stomach twisting at the explosive emptiness where the window’s supposed to be. 

More terrifying, though, is the cleanliness of the floor. No shattered shards or crystal-like proofs of destruction; nothing but wood and carpet and dirty rugs. 

Pete swallows down bile when he reaches the middle of the room, facing the window because he can’t bear to turn his back to it now.

“The glass is outside,” he breathes, praying Patrick can hear him; praying Patrick can understand. “This was broken from inside the room.”

The realization— the horrible and sudden knowing— strikes him with the certainty of waking up or falling asleep. His muscles lock and his eyes grow sore from how widely they’ve been pried open, eyebrows feeling as if they may brush against the dark locks pulled back from his forehead. He tries to think of anything but monsters and ghosts, creatures with deadly grins and eyes like all his nightmares. Too late, he shoves these thoughts away.

Too late, he realizes Patrick still hasn’t spoken.

“Patrick?” The name is off his tongue before he’s fully turned around, unsurprised but still terribly chilled when he’s greeted with nothing but an empty room. “Patrick, now’s not the time for jokes like this.” He wishes he could sound like he believes it’s only that— only a joke, only a prank, only a little bit of payback.

Patrick doesn’t answer. 

Something like an ice-cold knife trails down the length of Pete’s spine, dripping with horror movies and graveyard promises. The fear wraps itself around his very being, embracing every inch of him with its mocking kiss.

One foot in front of the other, Pete goes into the hallway, half-expecting to find Patrick and half-expecting to find a corpse. He curses himself for his own thoughts but it’s nothing new— not when it involves Patrick disappearing and the sense that he only has himself to blame.

He doesn’t dare call out Patrick’s name, his tongue heavy in his mouth when he swallows in an attempt to ease the sudden dryness. In one room and out in a second, Pete doesn’t linger in any one place for long because something dark and dismal inside him promises it won't be that easy.

Hours might pass before he reaches the stairs, creeping down and wincing at every creak beneath his feet. Days might pass by the time he clears the downstairs area, whispering Patrick’s name when, really, he wishes he could shout and scream it.

An entire life might have gone by and Pete certainly feels as if it has. Perhaps he wasn’t wrong about being the ghost within these walls, the specter haunting his victims with wails about his lost lover.

As if by this request, as if reading his mind, the house shudders beneath his feet— a subtle shake, a breath or a sigh— and such a wail whistles out from behind him. Sorrowful and aching, finding a home between his ribs and forcing him to turn around.

The girl behind him— the young woman with long golden hair and smoke on her breath— smiles with crooked teeth and haunted eyes. Pete bites back a scream of his own, hands grasping his shirt as if holding onto something will make this sudden appearance any better.

“Are you stuck here?” She asks with a voice straight from one of those early 20s films, high-pitched with overly annunciated vowels. It matches the long white dress hanging loosely from her frame and the soft curls scattered throughout her hair— as if it’d been pinned up overnight and set free without warning. “Are you lost, too?”

It takes Pete an embarrassing amount of time to respond, forcing his voice and brain to cooperate as he gasps out a, “yes, I am.”

The girl’s smile grows; the hollowness of her eyes expands. “Oh, I’ve been stuck here a few days, too. But I think I found a way out. C’mon, I’ll show you.”

There’s everything wrong with what she’s saying, everything wrong with how she doesn’t cast a shadow or how the floor refuses to creak beneath her stocking-clad feet. She’s small, though, and quickly passes through darkened halls and ominous rooms with the ease of someone who’s been here for more than just a few days.

Still, Pete follows the trail of sparks and smoke left in her wake, his heart chasing the hope that, maybe, she’s kind. Maybe, she’ll lead him to Patrick.

Maybe, she’ll let them leave. 

He stops, though, when they arrive at the basement door, the woman turning to watch him with a curious gaze. Pale blue, the shade of water before it freezes, fixes on him and he feels their chill despite the promise that this girl— this ghost— burns.

“Well, aren’t ya coming?” She sounds angelic; she sounds disastrous. 

She doesn’t give him a chance to respond, turning as her shoulders shake with a childish giggle, and tosses open the basement door. Pete watches in horror as she descends into the pitch-black abyss, shadows swirling with dares and silence beating against his skull as she disappears.

Pete could leave. He could shut the door and pretend that locking it would do any good. He can go back to the broken window, take his chances with climbing to the roof and waiting for help— real help— to arrive. He could stay safe.

But he can’t be happy so long as he knows Patrick is lost.

Slowly, he steps down. The door squeaks with a high-pitched scream as it eases itself shut behind him, locking him in with the disaster of darkness. 

One step down. His stomach drops with it. Another step, a tight grip on the banister, and Pete pretends his eyes are adjusting to the never-ending night. 

Down, down, down he goes until he’s certain the staircase can’t go much longer. At the bottom, he thinks he sees a speck of light but it’s only the woman’s hair reflecting the flames now lit behind her cool eyes.

“Wow, would you look at that,” she says, though these words hold no emotion. “You actually came on down. Not many people do that, you know.”

“I know,” Pete says. She’s trapped him on the last step, blocking the rest of the way down. Dusty cement and musty air fill Pete’s lungs as he breathes in and leans away, her smiles flickering like a candle moments from going out. “I’m… Look, I’m just looking for my friend, Patrick. Have you seen him?”

At this, she lights up— a puppet whose strings have suddenly been tugged on— and she nods agreeably.

“I know that name,” she says, proud of herself. “Come on, over here.”

Pete has no choice but to follow, his heart alternating between falling into his stomach and leaping to his throat as the girl leads him through the darkened basement, muttering to herself about getting lost in such a big house.

“Here,” she says, stopping so suddenly Pete has to jerk to the side to keep from running into her. With a skeletal finger, she points into the corner of the room where a candle burns just bright enough to illuminate the slumped over figure. “Is that yours?”

She looks at Pete as if seeking approval, eyes deep and expectant, but Pete barely sees it, too caught on Patrick’s limp form.

He’s tied up, hands above his head and hanging from one of the exposed rafters on the ceiling. His feet just skim the ground, head hanging low between his shoulders as he sways from side to side.

“Patrick,” Pete breathes, feeling as if all his breath had been held just for that one name. “Patrick, oh my god.”

Shadows forgotten and fears exchanged for horrors, Pete runs to Patrick’s side, hands fidgeting in the air as he searches for wounds or signs of life. He’s greeted, though, only with a sickening paleness to Patrick’s skin, shadows like bruises beneath his eyes, and the consistent groaning of someone in pain.

“What did you do to him?” He asks. His voice is soft but Patrick’s eyes flutter open at the sound all the same, recognition and confusion both filling the blue. Unthinking, Pete places a gentle hand on Patrick’s cheek, breath hitching at the feverish heat and sweat sticking to his palm when Patrick presses closer, his groans growing. “What did she do?”

“What did  _ I  _ do?” The girl behind him asks, affronted as she walks over to stand beside them. Hands over her heart, offended, she looks between Pete and Patrick. “ _ You  _ are the ones who got lost in my home. And it was so kind of you, too. It’s been a while since I’ve had any fun down here, you know. I never understood why anyone would hurt my husband so but, after trying it for myself, there is a certain… pleasure from knowing you hold someone’s life and love in your hands.”

“Leah.” Pete knew it from the start, from the second he saw those lifeless sparks in her eyes, but he didn’t want to believe in ghosts— the way he didn’t want to believe Patrick had been taken by one. 

“Oh, so you do know me!” Leah grows livelier with each exchange, sparks becoming flames and smoke becoming ash at her feet as she walks circles around them. “I’ve had visitors who’d break in just for the fun, not understanding the stories and names. But you seem to know the details. So you know I just need him.”

Pete still can’t look away from Patrick’s pained gaze, can’t unhear the fear in his trembling breaths, but Leah’s words send a flash of black horror across his vision. 

“I don’t know why you think you need him,” Pete says, flicking his gaze towards her. “But I will say you can’t have him. I’m sorry for your loss, I am, but it was years ago. You can’t hurt people because of it. No one here did you any harm.”

Leah’s smile is a knife, dripping with the blood of everyone she’s already hurt. “No, you don’t see. I wasn’t with my husband while he was dying and hurting and screaming. This way, I can imagine how he might have looked or sounded. I can better picture how it looked to see the lights go out from his eyes. This isn’t revenge— it’s coping.”

_ Dying and hurting and screaming  _ play on repeat in Pete’s mind and he feels weak, certain he’s going to throw up or pass out if he has to even imagine this ghost laying a hand on Patrick.

He doesn’t want to look away, afraid Patrick will be stolen again if he does, but Leah circles behind him and Pete has to face her, has to stand between her and the only person he promised to take a bullet for.

“I won’t allow it.” His voice is stronger than he feels, made up of every doubt and false courage he’s had tonight. “He’s coming with me.”

Leah’s smile dims but never dulls, a blade hiding in shadows. “You really think you have that sort of power? You believe you have the will to stop me?”

“You have no idea how stubborn I am.” Pete squares his shoulders as if preparing to fight this spirit, sparks blinding him as they shoot free from Leah’s voice. She growls, a fearful shaking sound coming from deep in her throat.

“And you have no idea what you’re doing. If you stay, you die, too. Are you willing to sacrifice yourself for nothing more than the memory of a few scattered dalliances?” She snaps, bending her head to the side at an unnatural angle. Pete feels sick, nausea gripping his throat with a clammy hand, and his breath reeks of horror.

“I don’t care,” he says, barely hearing his own voice. “It’s better than leaving him alone with you.”

With each word, Leah’s mouth tears open into a cavernous abyss, her eyes darkening into the deep orange of blistering flames, and she wails with a melody of hurt pride. Pete stumbles away, forced back by the power of the cry, and Patrick groans again when Pete bumps into him.

“You should go,” Patrick whispers, a soft whine threaded through the words. Pete turns, eyes wide in shock, as Patrick struggles to meet his gaze. “There’s no point in you staying, too.”

“You’re still so stupid,” Pete says, ignoring the confused offense in Patrick’s eyes as he snaps at him. He turns back to Leah, Patrick’s rambling voice—  _ go, go, leave me, go _ — encouraging the briefest bout of bravery. “What if I stay, then? What if I take his place? Will you let him go, then?”

This brings another haunting smile to Leah’s face, her mouth closing back to a normal shape rather than the oversized O she’d been howling from. 

This brings Patrick into a greater awareness, kicking at the ground with renewed strength and tugging uselessly at his bonds.

“You say I’m the stupid one?” He asks, blinking the haze from his eyes and spitting out his words. “Damn it, why can’t you just leave me here? Why do you have to make this so difficult?”

“Because,” Pete snaps, turning to face him once more. Patrick’s still pale, still drained of the lively flush that should be covering his cheeks as Pete steps close enough to grab his bound wrists, to still his thrashing actions. “Because I know you don’t love me anymore, okay? I know that. But I also know that I never stopped loving you so just shut up and let me do this!”

Pete wishes his voice wasn’t breaking from the weight of his emotions; he wishes Patrick wasn’t looking at him like he doesn’t believe a word Pete’s said. 

“You think I stopped loving you? Did I ever say that? Did I ever act like I didn’t care?” He asks, his eyebrows furrowed and eyes flooded with hurt— as if this is the worst part of his night. “Pete, just because we’re not together, it doesn’t mean I don’t still love you. That’s part of me and it’ll never go away. I’ll never stop loving you.”

Pete wants to deny it, to scream that Patrick never promised him this. He wants to fight and kick and shout that it isn’t fair that he chooses now to say such things; he wants to accuse him of lying.

He lets go of Patrick, Leah’s laughter behind him as he steps back— gets a better look. Patrick’s still fading somehow, some curse of the house draining his energy and life, but his eyes are clear and they’re on Pete. His jaw is set in determination and nothing about him is a lie.

“We’re so stupid.” Pete sighs but then moves forward, thoughtless and reckless, Patrick’s head tilting up in time to meet Pete in a desperate kiss. The press of Patrick’s lips frightens Pete and the urgency in which Patrick presses back terrifies him. Patrick strains against his bonds until he can pull no further and Pete tries to understand how something so unexpected, so unplanned, can ease every fear he’s ever had.

Then, Patrick falls into his arms, the ropes gone, and Patrick looks up at Pete with startled eyes. Behind the alarm, though, is a daze that Pete feels echoed in the beating of his heart— a beating so harsh, so sudden, that he’d nearly forgotten it was there. 

It’s Patrick who snaps into reality first, pulling away and looking at the empty room. Leah’s gone and the darkness itself seems to have faded, shadows lighter than they were before. He spins, stumbling a few times, before looking at Pete with narrowed eyes.

“No,” he says sternly. “True love’s kiss did not just fucking save the day.”

Relief fills Pete, bubbling up out of his chest with a breathless laugh. 

“True love?” He asks, smiling. Patrick bites down on the corners of his mouth, clearly trying to hide a smile of his own. 

“Shut up,” he says. The harshness of it is belied by the way he falls forward into Pete again, wrapping him in his arms and burying his face in his neck. “Please don’t ever try to sacrifice yourself for me again.”

“Don’t get yourself in situations where I have to.” Pete returns the embrace, rubbing Patrick’s back and tightening his hold when he thinks of the ropes, the sparks, the fear of losing him so easily. He looks back towards the stairs, shadows parting to make way for the stairwell’s light. “Come on, let’s go home.”

Pete doesn’t correct himself on the implication that they share a home. As far as he’s concerned, he’s home so long as he’s with Patrick.

~

Sable shadows fall behind them as they make their way out the front door— unlocked, now that the ghost seems to have been vanquished. Pete doesn’t have the chance to say anything to Patrick— though he’s not certain what he’s supposed to say— before their tour group swarms in from the yard, asking questions and wondering aloud if they’re okay.

“It’s only been, like, thirty minutes. I’m sure they’re fine,” one of the girls says, checking her watch with a frown. Her friend nudges her, frowning even deeper.

“But we looked everywhere and we couldn’t find them. Michael was positive they were taken by the ghost,” she whines. Pete almost wants to apologize for surviving. He looks to Patrick with a helpless smile— a smile Patrick returns until the girl from before tugs him away.

“Patrick Martin Vaughn Fucking Stumph!” Kate shouts in a shrill voice, shoving him back. “What the hell was that? Did you want to scare me? Did you want to send me into cardiac arrest? We looked  _ everywhere  _ for you for almost an hour and you think you can just walk out here like it was nothing? What the fuck?”

“Wow,” Patrick says, twisting Pete’s heart nervously when he smiles back at the girl. “I didn’t know you cared so much, Kate.”

Kate. Almost a familiar name, now that Pete thinks of it. But Pete’s certain he’d met a Kate at—

“As if.” Kate tosses her head to the side and folds her arms across her chest. “I just didn’t want Aunt Pat to kill me for losing you. You pulled the same shit when we were kids and I was  _ always  _ grounded for it.”

—a Stumph family reunion.

Pete can only gawk as Patrick excuses himself from Kate, shuffling back over to Pete with a sheepish smile on his face. He brushes his hair back from his face, rolling his eyes with a little embarrassment.

“Sorry about that,” he says. “She’s—”

“Your cousin?” Pete asks, looking back and forth between the two as Kate goes to speak with Michael. They do look vaguely similar, now that he thinks about it. 

Patrick raises an eyebrow. “I was going to say protective but, yeah, that works, too. Coming alone just felt depressing, you know? Besides, I, um, I needed a distraction from… yeah, I needed a distraction from the break-up.”

Patrick looks away, color finally returning to his cheeks in the shape of a blush, and Pete can’t fathom how, after this entire evening, he’s embarrassed about this.

“Well, I’m glad you came,” Pete says quickly, anything to get Patrick’s eyes back on him. It works but Patrick’s eyebrow is raised again, an amused grin playing on his lips. “I mean, well, I’m not glad you got supernaturally kidnapped or whatever— that part sucked. But I’m glad we got the chance to talk.”

“Yeah,” Patrick says, his smile growing into something fonder. “Me too.”

Pete sighs in relief, looking Patrick over. He’s as handsome as ever, cheeks pink and eyes bright, but hints of Leah’s kidnapping still cling to the way he rubs his wrists and looks around as if expecting her to reach out for him once more.

“Hey, um, do you want to go talk somewhere else?” Pete asks. Patrick’s shoulders fall from their tense posture and he nods.

“ _ Yes _ .”

Patrick tells Kate he’s leaving— a conversation filled with a lot of  _ oohs  _ and  _ so you’re back together _ from his cousin— and then follows Pete to the parking lot, sliding into Pete’s car as if the passenger seat, beside Pete, is where he belongs.

“I haven’t thanked you yet,” Patrick says, wringing his hands together as Pete starts the car. He doesn’t drive yet, though, too busy watching Patrick. He’s bouncing his legs, jittery, and he won’t stop looking over at Pete, making sure he’s there.

Around the fifth time Patrick readjusts his hat, Pete ignores his nerves and reaches over to place a hand over Patrick’s. “Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah,” Patrick says, too quickly for it to be true. “Yeah, just shaken up. When… When she had me, it felt like forever. And she told me she had you, that I was going to be tortured but you were doomed to wander the halls forever as a lost soul. And, more than the torture and murder, what scared me most was that I might not see you again.” Patrick tugs his hand away from Pete, shoving himself against the door as far away as he could get. He won’t meet Pete’s eyes and his voice is barely heard. “Is it horrible if I didn’t want to tell you to leave, at first? If I thought, just for a second, that I could live with being trapped if it meant you were trapped, too? Would you be upset at me for that?”

Pete only needs a second to register Patrick’s words and the shaking breaths framing them. He shakes his head though Patrick can’t see, placing a hand on Patrick’s back and feeling him loosen up beneath his touch.

“I can’t be upset with you because, well, I understand. Without you, I’ve been a wreck. Useless and pathetic and crying myself to sleep kind of a wreck. I’ve missed you so fucking much that I can’t describe the feeling as any more than a hole in my chest that only you can fill.” Pete’s words fall free from his throat, feelings he hadn’t given voice to until now. Though it’s hard to speak without falling apart, to admit such things without begging Patrick to look at him, he continues. “Besides, you should know I would have never left you. I don’t think I can.”

“Then don’t,” Patrick says, looking back over at Pete. Pete’s lips jerk into a grin, something like a relieved laugh riding out on his next breath. He shakes his head and grabs Patrick’s hand.

“Never,” he says, leaning forward to peck Patrick on the lips, reveling in the gentle warmth and soft perfection. Patrick doesn’t pull away, pressing forward with a whine when Pete’s the one to pull back, smiling and laughing in complete joy. “I’m never leaving you again.”

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Again, be sure to check out the other fics here.
> 
> Tumblr is folie-aplusieurs if anyone wants to talk <3


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